“Presence of sound”, exploring “sound as such”, probing into silence, reduction – these were some of the catchwords used to try to define the new type of music that many improvisors and composers had made the focus of their attention towards the end of the 20th century. Though these musicians came from different backgrounds such as new music, the electronic community, jazz or experimental rock, there was one thing they all had in common: they believed that unprecedented and untrodden paths could not or should not lie in topping the existing complexity of tone systems, structural concepts or intercultural syntheses but in focusing on quiet, coincidental, delicate, singular, whispering, almost inaudible sounds, the single note, the smallest element, the subtle nuance, the extended stasis. And so they excluded traditional musical parameters, such as melodic, rhythmic or harmonic organisation, and dramatic expressiveness.

The reductionism of the 1990s was certainly not created ex nihilo. It was an independent radicalising synthesis of the post-war avant-garde’s creative canon – and it’s telling that it was fuelled by ideas sprouting up in new music, conceptual art and improvisation alike. By Morton Feldman’s ascetic rejection of all climactic development, dynamic changes and motivic logic, for instance; by Alvin Lucier’s abstract exploration of repetitive sequences and laminate structures; by John Cage’s transcendence of subjective expression or motivic work, generating “free sound”, which is not “produced” by following a logical system but simply “is”; by Giacinto Scelsi’s microscopic illuminations of the timbral variants of one central note; but also by Helmut Lachenmann’s obsessive concentration on instrumental noises. Now shifted to the fore were single notes and sounds that were perceived as disturbances or background noises in the classical and Romantic tradition of sound production – but it was not about more expressive intensity, nor about the emphatic rejection of facile formulas, as with Lachenmann. The reductionists, rather than destroy, discovered something, and they discovered it where our listening habits end: in the systemless physicality and spatiality of sound, in volume, in texture, in the blending of gestures.

All this is reminiscent of the aesthetic approach of the first generation of 1960s’ free improvisors – but today’s generation radicalised these ideas, all the more so to distance themselves from the density and expressiveness that characterised improvisation in the 70s and 80s, and from groove and melody that still predominate traditional jazz. In this light even the name of the group, originally formed in the early 1990s, is programmatic, for Polwechsel translates as "pole switching", which resonates perfectly with a music that has always been an alternative to the neo-Romantic variant of “new simplicity” in composition, and to the persistent structural complexity in mainstream new music.

Still, Polwechsel have a lot in common with the first generation of improvisors from the 1960s: a longstanding working collective is not nor ever was merely a form of collaboration, but reflects the way music is understood, or literally lived. An understanding that refuses to accept the traditional division into performer and composer just as it rejects the listener’s fixation on the instrumental skills of the virtuoso. Consequently, all of the Polwechsel members are accomplished improvisors who (in this lineup) only play their own compositions. Their notion of composition draws on the experiences in – individual and collective – improvisation. In this respect, the ensemble follows more in the footsteps of the improvising pioneers of composed music, Musica Elettronica Viva, or even more of Franco Evangelistis – the members of his composer-improvisor collective Nuova Consonanza maintained that their improvisations had the status of works.Even though they never notated their pieces, the improvisors committed themselves to extensive and systematic practice sessions to develop their musical language. But it was probably the British improvising collective AMM, with its members coming from completely different stylistic backgrounds, who were the strongest inspiration for Polwechsel’s idiomatic and aesthetic approach. This holds true not only for the anti-dramatic, anti-expressive stance, but also for the importance of graphic scores: AMM played “free” improvisations as naturally as they “interpreted” the graphic scores of ensemble member Cornelius Cardew in the 60s. The novel and epoch-making thing Polwechsel created was marked above all by the outstanding and radical way in which they transformed the classical ideas of the 1960s into an independent and fully contemporary synthesis.

Already on their last CD Archives Of The North (hatOLOGY 633) Polwechsel began moving cautiously away from their early, almost ascetic embrace of pared-down musical material, single musical moments, and low volume. Aesthetic parameters which they had excluded, such as chords, dynamic contrasts, denser textures, motivic developments or rhythmic structures, were carefully reintroduced. But now, when chord-like constructions find their way back into their music, then only as a reflection of their own reductionist experience and minimalist efficiency: they are scattered memories, premonitions, vague associations, never references to other works, nor mood music. Dynamic contrasts are not demonstrations of emotions, but mere timbral contrasts and a structuring of time. Along the Polwechsel path towards a reflected reintegration of the once excluded musical parameters, the two composers for this CD, Michael Moser and Werner Dafeldecker, have gone one step further while also reflecting Polwechsel’s own history: traditional parameters are reintroduced into the original Polwechsel idiom as disturbances, refractions or inclusions. The invitation extended to guest soloist John Tilbury is also part of the reflected reintegration of traditional elements and the extension of Polwechsel’s concept, which they develop in their cautious and persistent approach: it is a reference to both the tradition of free improvisation and the reductionist currents in modern composition, for Tilbury is not only a proven Feldman specialist, but also long-time pianist for AMM.

Werner Dafeldecker’s integration of pianist Tilbury consistently avoids the pitfalls of resorting to the tradition of the virtuoso piano concerto – and yet there is a subtle irony inthe way Dafeldecker creates after-images of the interplay between solo instrument and orchestral tutti. Michael Moser has a recording of single piano chords played via speakers into the strings of a second grand piano, called the “resonance piano”. Like the ruins of their lost (e.g. functional harmonic) meanings, disfigured beyond recognition, these chordal fragments resonate in the playerless second piano, while on the first piano Tilbury improvises rhapsodic-pointillistic sounds to the notated phrases being played by the other musicians. The empty chordal hull of absent tradition literally reverberates in the piano body and blends with Tilbury’s very present gestures.

The surprising thing one notices when listening to Polwechsel even today is that the aesthetic rigour of the musical structures and transitions is unmistakable and yet at the same time everything seems open and unpredictable. Though the music is fully structured, the way the instruments are played and how the voices are interwoven are always shaped by the improvisational experiences of the musicians.

“Place, Replace, Represent” by Michael Moser begins with a short, rhythmic, stringent intro. As the piece unfolds the rhythm recedes to make room for various overtone and noise mixtures. At the end, in a coda played by the whole ensemble, metric patterns from the beginning are repeated. Symmetries and proportions are actually what always play an audible role in his piece, and thus they may call to mind certain traditional proportional forms like the arch. Or perhaps the principle of ensemble playing: the two percussionists face the two string players, while over and over again the saxophone of John Butcher recolours the sounds of both duos or adds another layer; the sound of rubbed drum skins blends with the noise-sound mixtures of cello and bass, with individual drum pulses triggering the ensemble to produce precisely defined fields of noise.

Werner Dafeldecker’s piece “Field” is also based on contrasts or, more precisely, the harsh sequence of sound blocks, the abrupt changes of two totally different aspects of sound, on pole switching so to speak: solo – tutti; quiet – loud; filigree – dense; tone – field of noise; distinct pitches – isolated sounds from a field, individual noises, impulses; off – on; tension through textural density – contrast of tension through paring down sonorous structures; A – B in respective variations. Here, too, time structure and instructions are fully notated, while at the same time the sound streams of the individual blocks with their minute development clearly refer to the gestures of improvised music. Composition – with its lexical meaning of something “put together” – and improvisation – the unexpected or unpredictable – have become the two sides of the same thing.

Polwechsel’s recruitment of AMM pianist John Tilbury to play on their sixth album would be a crassly obvious step if the results weren’t so grand.
The mainly Middle European ensemble, which slimmed down to a quartet after making this record (double bassist Werner Dafeldecker, cellist Michael Moser, and
percussionists Martin Brandlmayr and Burkhard Beins are still around; saxophonist John Butcher has left) was founded to accomplish a mission; to bring
improvisational aesthetics and associated sounds into composition.The notion isn’t as remarkable as it was when they started 15 years ago. The ensemble’s
preference for measured, minimal gestures over the expressionism that founding member Radu Malfatti once indulged has become so codiﬁed in other hands that
you can pick your name for it (Reductionism, New London Silence, Onkyo). Tilbury is an improviser whose playing is inevitably compared to the work of composer
Morton Feldman, which is ﬁne as far at it goes – Tilbury once made an ace quadruple CD of the man’s piano works – but ignores the many other things he does
equally well. Field’s ﬁrst piece “Place, Replace, Represent” resembles a concerto because Tilbury’s sublime passes over the keyboard so ably occupy the foreground
while the rest of Polwechsel stick to measured rasps and isolated strikes. But the closer you listen, the more interweave is apparent. The percussionists’ stark beats fall
into the tonal and procedural paths of Tilbury’s prepared piano; his inside-the-box glisses join the thatch of frictional string and drum-skin voicings. More illusory
ghosts emerge as recorded piano chords play through a second piano and out through speakers into the studio air, where Tilbury’s ﬁgures creep around them. The
saxophone sighs, shadowed inﬁnitesimally by the strings. In “Fields,” the album’s second half, the musicians swap their already sparingly used notes in favor of
sounds and the music becomes even more detailed. The six players deploy creaks, knocks, purrs and elongated slides as thoughtfully and essentially as they did the ﬁrst piece’s identiﬁable instrumental sounds, forming carefully dimensioned surfaces that encircle the listener until you ﬁnd yourself deep inside the music, only to
make the surfaces disappear into an emptiness articulated by thin wiry glides. Tilbury reasserts his instrument’s identity 16 minutes in, essaying cut-short chords
against a bright ﬂair of mechanically stimulated cymbals. Nothing, he seems to say, has been forgotten, but nothing will be thrown wholesale and thoughtless into
the mix. Despite its spare sound this is total music, aware of near and distant pasts, open to a breadth of methods and sounds, dramatic and rich and complete.

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Clive Bell, The Wire

Polwechsel want to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand, they're clearly a highbrow, mittel-European 'project', on a mission to infuse reductionist trends
in improvised music with a nose-to-the-noise-grinder extended techniques of Helmut Lachenmann. Their albums only recently conceded to the frippery of actually
having titles, and their sleevenotes feature cerebral essays, painstakingly positioning the group in the New Music landscape. On the other hand, like AMM, they
make records that can be listened to with pleasure by people who can't tell Alvin Lucier from Alvin Curran, and who think Scelsi plays at Stamford Bridge in blue
strip. When Werner Dafeldecker (bass) and Michael Moser (cello) founded Polwechsel in Vienna in 1993, the group included guitarist Burkhard Stangl and
trombonist Radu Malfatti, who was on a journey from hard-blowing rattle-rouser in Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath to ultra-austere Pope of reductionism.
Dafeldecker and Moser devised the compositions (graphic scores, verbal instructions, stop-watch timings) for the ﬁrst album (title: 1), and for all it's worthiness, the
music was kind of fun. The phrasing was crisp and every note felt necessary. However much Polwechsel cloaked themselves in knotted-brow solemnity, there was a
bounce and a brio in the actual playing that pulled you in. In 1997 Malfatti was replaced by John Butcher, who stayed for ten years. Field, Polwechsel's sixth release
and recorded in 2007, represents his ﬁnal contribution. Stangl is gone, as are all the computers. This is an all-acoustic sextet, with two percussionists, Burkhard Beins
and Martin Brandlmayr, and a guest soloist, pianist John Tilbury. Tilbury's contribution is outstanding - if the whole record glows, it's down to him - but he's also a
neat choice in terms of historical inﬂuences, as he is both a leading interpreter of Morton Feldman's pieces and an improvising member of AMM.
The only Polwechsel album to be wholly improvised was 2002's Wrapped Islands, a collaboration with Christian Fennesz, and this time out there are just two tracks,
both composed: "Place/Replace/Represent" by Moser, and "Field" by Dafeldecker. Now, Butcher has on occasion been called a 'scientiﬁc' player for his chilly,
rigorous approach, but his low register, fur-clad purring on this openening track is downright erotic. There's enough sensuous bowing going on for a viol consort: not
only the heavy breathing and moaning of lightly bowed bass and cello, but yet more bows stroking cymblas and rubbing drumskins. It's a pavane of frottage, and
Tilbury picks his way through with aplomb - a dash of virtuoso piano pedal technique here, a rainbow of under-the-lid bottleneck glissando there. A distant recording
of piano chords is piped into a second piano, serving to highlight the tactility of the live playing. The title track is built from more schematic blocks. Individual voices
are less clear - instead there's an extraordinary group noise, as if sheltering from heavy rain inside a working wind mill. The group's compositional approach to
Improv means they can turn on a sixpence - Polwechsel means pole-switching - and several times a sudden plunge into silence serves to expose some fresh subtlety
from Tilbury's piano. With itÕs switches from ensemble textures to sparse soloing, "Field" is a kind of piano concerto. Tilbury takes a toolkit inside the instrument and
explores the echoing caverns there, as if shining a torch up on the walls and showing us precious stones. Behind the austere, monochrome sleeve photo, which
appears to show mirrors in the mud, this is an album of warmth, sensuality and inspiring attention to detail. Polwechsel handle sound gently, as if it were a baby.
Reductionism as a musical process, a way of working things out, has been around now for a decade and a half. It's effects can still bewilder: some concerts are
inaudible from further than three rows back, though an eventually released recording shows plenty of activity. Certain composers specialise in acres of silence, and
audiences learn that one performer's silence is for some reason more engaging than another's, as if there's a difference between composed silence (Cage) and
improvised silence (Seymour Wright). Then there are instrumentalists doing their damnedest to sound like computers, and wind players who avoid all notes as if they
just got banned by papal encyclical. Some listeners may feel that reductionism has also reduced the musicianship, and that some musicians are stuck in a holding
pattern dictated by current fashion, afraid to let themselves go in a climate hostile to expression. In this context Polwechsel sound an encouraging note. An old
criticism of Improv was too much dead wood: you wait too long for a good bit, or musicians brieﬂy enter exquisite territory only to rush off too quickly. Through
rigorous focus and composition, Polwechsel aim to maintain that territory and map it thoroughly. Reductionism may have resulted in less high-energy, physical
playing, but there's a new valuing of delicacy and detail. Improvisors are aware of the danger of going stale, and the need to constantly renew. The worst charge you
can level at improvisors is that they're simply repeating themselves - and yet, in order to ﬁnd their own voice, they have to establish a recognisable style. Polwechsel
tackle the repetition problem on two fronts: ﬁrst, by steadily reﬁning theri project and using timbral contrast more and more as a means of structuring lengthy pieces.
Secondly, by inviting guest musicians. Timbre and Tilbury - the result is a particulary warm, inviting record. The sheer sensuality of Polwechsel's ensemble playing,
and the care they take in recording it, are reasons for celebration. And maybe this sensuality is in the air just now. A few years ago I used to spend much concert time
listening to the slightly opaque, but deﬁnitely very hygienic, workings of computer software. These days I'm enjoying the sound of Lee Patterson setting ﬁre, live on
stage, to tangerine pips and hazelnuts. Sexy, no?

For Polwechsel's sixth album the reductionist ensemble are joined by John Tilbury, former AMM member and renowned Morton Feldman interpreter, an obvious decision, sure, but one that yields jaw-dropping results. 'Field' continues the group's research into post-digital improvisation, and the fluctuating ensemble is again all acoustic: pianist Tilbury alongside saxophonist John Butcher, cellist Michael Moser, bassist Werner Defeldecker and percussionists Burkhard Beins and Martin Brandlmayr. As fans of the group will be aware, however, categories such as 'electronic' and 'acoustic' matter little, as the intense focus which these musicians invest into exploring their instrument's extra-musical potentials results in sounds from which their source is frequently impossible to determine.
The two twenty + minute tracks of 'Field' explore contrary approaches. Moser's 'Place / Replace / Represent' is concerned with punctuating space with sparse, individual gestures, and it's here that Tilbury's input is most clearly felt. He coaxes dampened, treated sounds from his instrument, relishing the piano's wooden shell as much as the strings, and when clear notes are allowed to resound they are gorgeous. If this piece resembles the pointillistic Feldman of 'Triadic Memories' and 'For John Cage', Dafeldecker's 'Field' is Coptic Light, creaks, groans and scrapes smeared into a restless drone. Footsteps, bird calls and Jeck-hiss suddenly expands into a cloud of Deathprod-esque bass, concluding with the sound of bombs falling into peaceful space. This is improvisation of the most involved and involving kind, and music of the most engaging.

Keith Rowe's 2002 CD The Hands of Caravaggio was, or at least seemed to be, a sonata for improvisers built around his longtime AMM bandmate John Tilbury. Even down to the title, the recording — setting the pianist against a field of electronic sounds provided by the electro tentet MIMEO — seemed a tribute to the touch of a true classicist: If it wasn't an entirely unusual context to find Tilbury in, it was still a particularly beautiful one.
Tilbury's guest spot with Polwechsel on Field has a similar dynamic. The latest lineup of one of the greatest groups in minimalist improvisation (cellist Michael Moser, saxophonist John Butcher, bassist Werner Defeldecker and percussionists Burkhard Beins and Martin Brandlmayr), as heard on 2006's Archives of the North, works fantastically well, and seem on this 2007 studio recording to willfully take on a support role. Theirs is a much fuller sound than the previous lineups of the band. Silence is not a factor here, although certainly not all musicians play all the time, and the focus remains more on the creation of sound in itself than traditionally musical sounds. And of course, what is central is the group dynamic, the interplay. Polwechsel might not work within harmonic structures, but it works for much as a band.
Through varying lineups Moser's group has always excelled at creating sound palates more likely to be associated with electronic instruments. Against, and within, this backing, Tilbury's piano sounds gorgeous. The disc is comprised of two tracks, both about 20 minutes. "Place / Replace / Represent," credited to Moser, is the more delicate of the two, which makes the prolonged, static noises in Dafeldecker's "Field" all the more surprising. Needless to say with such an ensemble, all of the musicians excel. Field is a valuable addition to the discographies of both Polwechsel and Tilbury.

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massimo ricci, braindeadeternity / 2010

POLWECHSEL & JOHN TILBURY - Field

For this session, materialized in 2007, Polwechsel comprised two percussionists (Burkhard Beins, Martin Brandlmayr), a saxophonist (John Butcher), strings (Werner Dafeldecker on double bass, Michael Moser on cello) and the hypothetically pivotal figure of John Tilbury, who results instead entirely incorporated in the collective’s sound taken as a whole; his personal incidence is, at times, far from conspicuous if ever valuable.

Immediately after the elapsing of the initial seconds of Michael Moser’s “Place / Replace / Represent”, the first in a brace of extensive pieces, we illusorily believe ourselves to be the ultimate addressees of an essential acoustic report. The music, brilliantly recorded by Martin Leitner and Wolfgang Musil, is in fact executed with undiluted severity bordering on the maniacal, the players focusing on distinct gestures like if they were their last acts on earth, the fastidious care with which every strained note reveals primary harmonics and composite overtones at the basis of a growing sense of inside involvement that places the listener’s seat amidst the performing musicians almost factually. It is not implausible, indeed, to perceive the tiniest human component while attempting to decode the messages; the soft whistle of the air exhaled from someone’s nose is clearly identified in a couple of stiller segments, which makes one imagine tight-lipped absorption and shut eyes in pursuit of a barefooted kind of rightness. In the midst of unmitigated tones, coarse scrapes and impulsive droning clusters, an amazing shade appears for only a few precious instants: it’s a “resonance piano”, namely – in Nina Polaschegg’s words – “a recording of single piano chords played via speakers into the strings of a second grand piano”. A hauntingly gripping presence, whose elusiveness seems to signify an insinuation of declining memory, its sonic worth a critical constituent of this stunning work.

Dafeldecker’s title track is both a direct response to the nearly religious atmosphere of the previous piece and a study on abrupt dynamic shifts, mostly typified by the alternance of straightforward motions in semi-silent environments (in turn characterized by a deeper attention towards the noisy features of the instruments, which get amplified and made resonate for long) and huge clouds of abrasive materials, impressively - and unwillingly - recalling David Jackman’s massively rasping snarls at one point, circa five minutes in. In between, various kinds of oscillations, gliding squeals on metal, a meticulous pondering on the placement of the residual events. Each signal is carefully considered, reciprocal nods useful for the artists’ preparation to the next flood of grittiness. Distinctive voices are in truth discernible – listen, for example, to how Butcher manages to let us hear the sax chirruping acutely, when differentiating cumulative notes and sheer clamour becomes more problematic.

And yet, whatever individual accent a pair of specialist ears might recognize, what lingers on following several days of deep scrutiny of this album is the impression of a communal levitation that, as it often happens, finds its origin in the inhospitable land where the importance of “surpassed” concepts such as timbre, pitch and harmony is secondary, and all that's heard is rendered authoritative by an edifying lack of pretension.